School Board Member Explains His `No' Vote

July 08, 1994

The lone school board member to oppose the elementary school reorganization plan said Thursday that the new system will lead to busing and the end of neighborhood schools.

In a 6-1 vote Tuesday, the board of education approved a sweeping plan that will change the structure of the town's elementary schools beginning in September 1995. The plan calls for realigning the schools in a kindergarten through second-grade, third-through fifth-grade and magnet school structure over a three-year period. The traditional kindergarten through fifth-grade structure will eventually be eliminated.

School board member Geoffrey Fisher was the only one to oppose the plan, saying that the neighborhood school structure should be maintained.

``We are going to be busing students all over the town,'' Fisher said Thursday. ``I argued that neighborhood schools afford a sense of community, and it allows parents to be more involved.''

Advocates of the plan say the new structure will lead to more equality between schools in the north and south ends of town. One board member asked whether Fisher was suggesting keeping a ``separate but equal'' school system in place, a reference to the segregation of public schools that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the early 1950s.

``Separate but equal comes from an era when students could not attend a school,'' Fisher said. ``When [people] move to that neighborhood, they can go to that school. There may be some people who couldn't move to a neighborhood because of economics.''